--24 percent: Children with a working father and a stay-at-home mother

--65.9 percent: Workers employed full time

--3.5 years: Average time worker has been with current employer

--27.6 percent: Workers with flexible work schedules

--9.2: Jobs the average person holds from age 18 to 34

--7.5 million: People holding more than one job in July

--13.5 percent: Workers belonging to a union

--21 million: People who did some work at home as part of their primary job

Source: Labor Department

For Monica Hinojos, the headlines are more than just depressing news -- they are reality. Hinojos, 32, of Boston has been laid off twice this year, her jobs among the thousands of casualties of a softening economy.

"I wouldn't say I'm bitter, but I don't see loyalty in the same way," she said.

That is true for a lot of workers, according to a survey of 2,785 workers returning questionnaires to Walker Information, an Indianapolis research firm.

Just 24 percent of the workers responding said they were committed to the company they work for and plan to stay at least two years. Only about half said they would recommend their employer to others seeking a job.

Today's worker makes an average of $14.27, works 34.2 hours a week, gets an average of 9.3 paid holidays per year and has held the current job an average of 3.5 years, according to the latest numbers from the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Hinojos got her latest pink slip last week, from Computerworld magazine, where she worked in the events department. She had been there for two months.

"I was the last one in, so it just kind of made sense," she said.

The job was not a perfect fit for Hinojos, so it was not devastating news. She took the job in almost a panic after being laid off April 30 from the marketing job she loved at Allaire Corp., an Internet software company that was bought by Macromedia Inc.

"There was a lack of communication -- nobody really knew what was going on," she said of her first layoff. "There was a lot of speculation and rumors, and all of a sudden it hit. It was tough -- and to see a lot of people go who were really solid was hard."

Layoffs have driven the nation's unemployment rate from a 30-year-low of 3.9 percent in October to 4.5 percent in July. Many economists are predicting the jobless rate will continue to rise, but remain at or below 5 percent.

A gloomy economy has created some grumpy workers. But the prosperity of recent years could be adding to that with higher career expectations.

"The question people are asking is, 'Why should I make myself miserable in a job I hate, especially if it will mean more hours and more headaches?'" said Ed LaFreniere of The Marlin Company in North Haven, Conn., a developer of workplace communications products.

Nearly three in four workers surveyed by Marlin said they would not want the job of their boss. But workers with the highest incomes were more likely to say they wanted it. The telephone survey of 751 American workers had an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

"Today people find it important to strike a balance between dedication to their personal lives, spending time with their families and pursuing personal goals," said Marlin's president, Frank Kenna III.

What American workers are saying and the reality appear to differ. Americans actually are putting in the longest hours in the industrialized world, spending nearly one week more on the job per year than they did a decade ago, according to a study by the International Labor Organization.

The average American worked 1,978 hours last year, up from 1,942 hours in 1990. Americans are working only less than workers in South Korea and the Czech Republic, said the study by the U.N. agency.

"The increase in the number of hours worked within the United States runs counter to the trend in other industrialized nations where we see declining annual hours worked," ILO economis Jeff Johnson said.

Japan held the title for the most hours worked until the mid-1990s, when the United States surged ahead. Now, Americans work almost a month more than the Japanese and almost three months more than Germans.

Economists have said Americans are working more because of the economic boom of the 1990s and an increase in young workers looking to make a good impression.

"Hours are increasing and productivity is increasing, but at what cost?" Johnson said.

The barrier between work and off-time also appears to be eroding. About 43 percent of people surveyed by Ipsos-Reid Corp., a market research firm, said they spend their time off dealing with work issues. But 30 percent confess to spending time at work using the Internet or e-mail to handle personal matters. The telephone poll surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults and has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

"Addressing worker dissatisfaction will increasingly be an issue of allowing workers time off that is really time off from work," said Thomas Riehle of Ipsos-Reid in Washington.